The present disclosure relates to inkjet printing, and more particularly toward an inkjet printhead useful in ejecting non-water-based inks in an imagewise fashion.
In current inkjet printers, an inkjet jet stack is made up of 16-20 gold-plated stainless steel plates that are brazed together. Cavities etched into each plate align to form channels and passageways for containment of ink for each individual jet. Larger cavities align to form larger passageways that run the length of the jet stack. These larger passageways are ink manifolds arranged to supply ink to individual jets for each color of ink. Up to eight of these plates are used to create these manifolds to ensure a large enough cross-section to avoid ink starvation of the individual jets when writing solid colors while keeping the manifold internal to the jet stack.
The word “printer” as used herein encompasses any apparatus, such as digital copier, bookmaking machine, facsimile machine, multi-function machine, etc. which performs a print outputting function for any purpose. Including chemical and bio assay printed thin film devices, three-dimensional model building devices and other applications.
To increase printing speed, the number of jets may be increased within a jet stack and firing frequency of the jets may be increased. Increasing the number of jets and firing frequency using the above-described ink manifold design would require increasing the size of the ink manifold which, in turn, means using more plates to achieve a large enough cross-section. Individual gold-plated stainless steel plates are expensive, so increasing the number of plates quickly increases the cost of the jet stack.
Typically there are four ink colors used within a jet stack. The ink jets for each color are widely distributed across the face of the jet stack. The passageways from each ink manifold follow paths to the widely distributed individual jets and cross above and below each other, which adds to the height of the jet stack requiring more plates. This geometry necessary within the stack also makes the passageways from the manifolds to the individual jets relatively long and circuitous which adds drag to the ink flow, limiting the mass throughput of ink to the individual jets.